Our third BookTalk event of 2019 will combine discussion of classic and translated literature with the influential French classic Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. This novel was first published in 1856 and translated into English by Eleanor Marx Aveling in 1886. Our next event will bring together experts on 19th Century literature and French Studies to discuss some of the key themes of this influential work. Speakers include:

Dr Kate Griffiths (Cardiff University) is a Reader in French and Translation. She specialises in the adaptation of literature into film, radio, television and other media. She is the author of Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation (Oxford: Legenda, 2009), Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio and Print (Cardiff: UWP, 2013) and Emile Zola and the Art of Television (Oxford: Legenda, forthcoming 2019). She is currently completing A History of French Literature on Film (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). She was academic consultant to the BBC Radio year-long adaptation of the Rougon-Macquart series by Emile Zola.

Dr Mary Edwards (Cardiff University) is a Teacher in Philosophy within the School of English, Communication and Philosophy. Her doctoral thesis uncovers the philosophical significance of Sartre’s biographical study of the author, Gustave Flaubert. Her research and teaching interests are in the fields of existentialism, phenomenology, feminist philosophy, philosophy of literature, and the imagination, and she has published papers on the gendered politics of shame and the meanings that are projected onto women’s bodies in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy and Discipline Filosofiche.

Dr Katherine Mansfield was awarded her Ph.D. in English Literature by Cardiff University in January 2019. Her thesis explores the relationship between Sensation and New Woman fiction to investigate the extent to which Sensation literature is a forerunner to the early development of the New Woman novel; and consequently how the two genres blur, or cross, temporal and conceptual boundaries. She is the founder and editor of the website Crescent Waves, an online literary and cultural magazine dedicated to promoting the work of women in literature and film.

The speakers will present and there will be plenty of opportunity for audience questions and discussion. To make the most of the session, you may like to read or re-read Madame Bovary before the event.